Adapting to sea level rise

Sea level rise is a slow onset event. To examine the potential effects of high sea level rises, it is worth looking at WRRFs that have experienced land subsidence caused by steep water level changes. For example, the Miyagi Prefecture in Japan experienced up to 1.14 m of land subsidence after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. WRRFs near the coastline in this area, including Minami-Gamo, Sen-en, and...

The experience gained at these three WRRFs indicates that there are three critical levels within them, namely the ground level, discharge level, and groundwater level. These levels connect to three different types of flooding that can be caused by sea level rise: coastal, discharge, and groundwater inundation.

The experience of these WRRFs provide a clearer picture of where and how sea level rise can affect other facilities around the world. Staff working at these facilities shared possible solutions with the author Anh Cao during two field visits in March 2018 and March 2019. Each WRRF should evaluate their exposure to the effects based on the identified critical levels to plan adaptation...

Anh Cao is a doctoral student in the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science – Global Leadership Initiative in the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Professor Takashi Mino, the coordinator of the program, and Professor Miguel Esteban, a coastal engineering scholar at Waseda University, are supervising her work.